Apparently the union and Amazon were both granted the ability to have four observers present during the counting. Amazon wanted wanted to watch the ballot box itself (not the votes or counts or ballots) during off hours so both parties can confirm that it wasn't tampered with.

> Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB’s Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according to an NLRB order denying Amazon’s request. The camera feed would have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU.

That doesn't sound as nefarious as the headline suggests. In fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras.

I think it's important to understand, for this decision, the context of the election process. Secret ballot union elections are conducted not by the employer or the union, but actually by the NLRB itself, a federal agency. These elections are carried out according to specifications and requirements produced by NLRB as administrative law.

So consider that Amazon's request for security measures beyond what the NLRB has previously found necessary will increase the time and cost for NLRB to run the election... it seems likely to me that the NLRB would reject the request simply because they feel it to be unnecessary and to impose additional complexity and cost on the NLRB (and thus potentially the taxpayer).

Won't Amazon cover 100% of the cost, including whatever incidental costs?

Adding a camera to a room is not rocket science, it's a 1-hour project at worst, after which the camera operates unobtrusively.

I bet this is more of a turf war, a demonstration of status.

Actually, it's more likely a matter of law.

The election process is codified in law. Changing it carries legal implications, one being the law is in question.

For an election of this significance, the very best thing to do is run it by the book, the entire book, chapter and verse.

Yes, rules for conducting elections are in the CFR as section 102.69 of 29(b)I part 102. I'm far from a lawyer but I do suspect that the NLRB granting one-off additions to these rules outside of the normal rulemaking process would put them in a difficult situation going forward.

There are also laws regarding surveillance on federal property.

I've seen that stated nowhere, but there's zero chance Amazon will compensate the NLRB for the disruption of its other work even if they asserted they'd be willing to for the core stuff.

> In fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras.

I've been a voting official a couple of times in Germany. Here, the ballot boxes (which are literal trash cans, just in a different color) get loaded with everything (ballots, tabulation aids, even the pencils) at the end of the day and sealed off, then over night left behind in the room where the election and counting happens (usually a school classroom), and at the beginning of the next day we verify the seals haven't been tampered with, unload the cans and continue counting.

Amazon requested similar measures, including tamper-proof tape:

> According to the motion, Amazon asked that the NLRB change or reset the security locks to the storage room’s door where the ballots will be held, provide Amazon and the RWDSU with an electronic or physical log of when the storage room door is opened during the counting process and use tamper proof tape on the ballot boxes or storage room door to “ensure no unauthorized access to the envelopes, ballot boxes, or storage room occurs.”

These measures seem rather basic and in the interest of both sides, to be honest. It's strange that there's so much resistance.

This is a federal agency with legal authority:

  1 - why should they have to answer to Amazon on how they conduct elections that they have been handling for longer than Amazon has existed?

  2 - since it is Federal, any change to the way they handle things would likely delay the election - but perhaps that's what Amazon is really after - or they're taking a page from the Republicans and will use it to sow fake doubt about the outcome

The ability to challenge and potentially change government procedures exists in various forms at all levels of the political and legal systems. One could argue that it's a key component of the systems' strengthening and improving over time.

More cynically, it's also an agency who's purpose is to support labor. So, it seems understandable that one of the biggest companies with some of the hottest labor issues would want any types of insurance it can acquire in the interest of contingency-planning.

> These measures seem rather basic and in the interest of both sides, to be honest. It's strange that there's so much resistance

Giving Amazon the benefit of doubt, some unions are notoriously corrupt. Giving that benefit to the union, it could have just been the latest stalling tactic in a long string of reasonable requests.

> They benefit nobody but the people in the union.

Amazon has enacted policies that are entirely employee-hostile... like creating timetables that are impossible to fulfill unless they pee in bottles or take a dump to fertilize a customer's lawn. And those policies were created that benefits nobody but Amazon itself.

Why would this scenario be more acceptable than a union whose goal is to empower workers and to allow an official process to create lasting change?

If anything, any union policies that get enacted by the company generally benefits all employees of Amazon, union or not. It's not like amazon will give benefits to only union members, because that would then cause non-union employees to join the union, boosting the union's power.

In any case, if we're generalizing all unions like in your statement, then we can generalize corporations as well. Since all corporations just look out for themselves, and can throw you and your life under the bus at any time, having union is still better than a corporate overlord. Americans will therefore hate corporations more than unions.

> It's strange that there's so much resistance.

I can think of two plausible, good reasons for resisting these measures:

1. It's in Amazon's best interest to delay the vote as much as they can. More security edicts from Amazon means more delays, which means that Amazon can spend more time blasting both the public and their own employees with anti-union messaging.

2. Security demands from Amazon are a chilling force on the independence of the union. The union already has voting rules and mechanisms; kowtowing to Amazon makes them appear weak and establishes a precedent for future union body decisions.

I think the first reason is stronger than the second, but that both are perfectly sufficient and acceptable objections to Amazon's demands, particularly in light of their established delay tactics. Absent of any evidence to the contrary, there's no reason to believe that the union and NLRB are incapable of holding a fair election on their own terms.

a camera while voting, has chilling effect, but a camera at the location while the ballots are stored overnight is kinda common sense. If it was a sack of cash, or even just supplies that were valuable, it would have been treated the same.

Who says it won't have a camera? The article doesn't really say.

Amazon wants a camera they (and the union) have access to.

Without the data, I assume the federal body in question has their security practices and the people involved know this is a hot topic. Whether that is enough remains to be seen.

Who'd be chilled, the box? They ask for a camera watching the box with ballots, not voters themselves. And I can't believe installing a webcam would take much time. I'm pretty sure one could order it from... say Amazon? - and get it the next day ;)

> Who'd be chilled, the box?

The chilling effect is on the prospective unionists -- there isn't much point in being in a union if the union unconditionally accepts orders from your employer.

As a reminder: there is absolutely no evidence of impropriety at any level here. Amazon's demands amount to handwringing and FUD; acquiescing to them sends the message that Amazon, not the union, ultimately calls the shots in union elections.

> there isn't much point in being in a union if the union unconditionally accepts orders from your employer.

That's BS - nobody talking about accepting every order forever, whatever it is. The matter in question here is completely common and reasonable security measure. To refuse it just to be obstinate and play the power game is childish and pointless. Exactly what one doesn't want in a union - preferring power games to the benefit of the workers - who, I presume, would want an honest election - and an election that can be proven to be honest.

> there is absolutely no evidence of impropriety at any level here

So what? There's no evidence I am a terrorist, but I have to show ID and go through the security when I fly (or enter a court building). There's no evidence I am not paying taxes, but I have to submit my tax return (and sometimes undergo audit - without any evidence I cheated!). There's no evidence I am an illegal immigrant, but I still have to show my ID when passing the border. There's no evidence I am a crappy driver, but I still have to get a driver license, by passing tests. There's no evidence I am a criminal, but I still have to show ID and submit to a background check if I want to buy a firearm. There's no evidence I stole my credit card, but I still have to type in the secret code in the form. There's no evidence I am impersonating somebody else on HN, but I still have to type the password when I am logging in. There's no evidence somebody is breaking into my house, but I still have lock and keys (and cameras).

I could continue for hours. There are thousands of cases where security measures are taken without evidence of somebody's personal misconduct that already happened. That's how you make sure the probability of misconduct is very low - by taking measures before it happened, not after. Somehow in this particular case it's not clear - despite widespread usage of security cameras otherwise, that could have hinted you that using security cameras does not have proof of misconduct as prerequisite - in fact, the presence of the cameras is usually the prerequisite of obtaining the evidence.

> Amazon's demands amount to handwringing and FUD

There was no base for FUD until people started refusing common security measures - and then there is, if they don't plan to cheat why they are so against the common security measures? If there's no misconduct, why they are so keen to ensuring there could be no possibility of having any evidence of it?

> That's BS - nobody talking about accepting every order forever, whatever it is. The matter in question here is completely common and reasonable security measure.

Whether or not it's reasonable (which it is!) is entirely orthogonal to the fact that Amazon is making it. Corporations setting the standards for "legitimate" union voting is a precedent that every union and the NLRB wants to avoid.

You've laid out a big list of things that society (or corporations) ask you to do when you exercise various rights and privileges. That's great. Now consider the following: it's not your (or my) union election. You don't get to make the rules; the union and the NLRB do. They don't see it fit to allow Amazon to engage in special pleading, for precisely the reason I stated above.

> There was no base for FUD until people started refusing common security measures

Common security measures would be the measures conventional to a union election, which (surprise!), are codified by the NLRB[1]. Those regulations include directives for security and certification. Nothing about a corporate dictate would be acceptable or common in the context of a labor election.

[1]: https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/rules-...

> You don't get to make the rules; the union and the NLRB do.

In other words, might makes right, go away with your stupid logic and common sense. I see.

I think it's a little on-the-nose to frame a baby step towards unionization against one of the largest and most powerful companies on Earth as "might makes right," don't you?

The bottom line is this: the NLRB already has rules that protect the integrity of union voting activities. Amazon doesn't have a say in them, because they have no reason to have a say -- the prospective unionizers and their regulatory agency are the only relevant stakeholders. We (presumably) wouldn't allow McDonalds to impose arbitrary security considerations on our civil elections; what gives Amazon any more standing with the NLRB?

I didn't characterize steps towards unionization, this is complete misrepresentation of my argument. I did not argue against (or for) unionization - I argued against NLRB decision (which is the one wielding power of US Federal Government) to grant the union organizers completely unreasonable request to remove security measures. It is obvious that presence of security measures would not prevent union from being formed - unless you postulate that the vote could only possibly be won by fraud, in which case it shouldn't be formed. In any other case, the ballot security measures do not oppose union organizing in any way.

You argument was - since NLRB has the power, and unions need to demonstrate their power, it's ok to deny reasonable security measures because NLRB makes the rules, so they do what they want. That's what I referred to as "might makes right". And it's completely unacceptable behavior, yet very common.

> We (presumably) wouldn't allow McDonalds to impose arbitrary security considerations on our civil elections;

McDonalds does not run elections. But we do allow election poll workers to impose security measures, check your name in the lists of voters, establish chain of custody for ballots, etc. - even without proving in advance there's election fraud. That's how security works - it comes before, not after the hack. And yes, if McDonalds asked to have ballots secured, and somebody would oppose it for some reason - I'd suspect these people are about to perpetrate electoral fraud, and would question why these measures aren't already in place beforehand and require McDonalds to ask for them, instead of officials charged with performing elections doing them? Maybe those officials are in on the fraud and need to be investigated? We had some prosecutions recently for electoral fraud, so it's completely possible.

> what gives Amazon any more standing with the NLRB?

It's the election which affects interests of Amazon and Amazon workers, it's natural that they have special interest in preventing fraud in this particular case. You'd be more concerned about electoral fraud in your county than somewhere in a little town in another country.

Amazon's proposal may be entirely reasonable. But I could easily imagine that it's part of a very sophisticated strategy on Amazon's part to ultimately undermine a legitimate vote.

I have trouble guessing which approach approach is more desirable in this situation.

Just the rumour of "Cameras are recording who votes" could significantly alter the willingness of people to vote.

IIUC, this particular article deals only with keeping a camera on the ballot box after it's been sealed, and on the subsequent vote-counting.

So I don't think this poses a risk to anonymous voting per se.

But as we see from even comments in this article, the lack of clarity around this is probably enough to chill some potential voters from participating, correctly or otherwise.

> It's strange that there's so much resistance.

Not knowing the specifics, I'd imagine trust has just completely eroded for the workers where they always assume Amazon is nefariously working against them. Pure speculation on my part, but it's easy to understand psychologically.

I'll never understand how opposition to improving the integrity of things like this is taken seriously, much less defended.

While every improvement is a change, not every change is an improvement.

Honestly makes me feel the authority managing the vote believes that something corrupt is likely to take place.

The problem isn't that the steps they're requesting are onerous, it's that the process by which the ballots are stored and counted is already set forth in NLRB regulations and backed by law. Arbitrarily changing the conditions, even if each step seems practical, requires ratifying the changes, delays the counting, and potentially invalidating the vote.

When you've had a long vitriolic campaign it can be hard to agree to anything your opposition proposes even when it is clearly a fact or win-win.

Unions generally oppose most of these 'safeguards', including secret ballots. The stated reason for this is that the 'safeguards' are unnecessary and costly; employers often suggest that the unions engage in pressure tactics and fraud.

I can't think of a valid reason why one would object to having a camera over the box, unless they intend to tamper with it. I mean, I can understand objections to installing cameras where there might be privacy or ballot secrecy issues. But the box doesn't have privacy and it won't reveal anyone's ballot's content - so why the objection?

Because it adds yet another layer of Amazon is watching you... They've done everything they can to intimidate these employees.

To be fair though, this sounds like it's more of a storage box for NLRB to count incoming mail ballots.

But that's still an unnecessary step one has to ask why. Does amazon really think some government agency or a union will break in watergate style or tamper with votes on something this nationally important?

And the ballots themselves might be identifiable? I'm not sure if the envelopes have return addresses or there are names/signatures on the ballots themselves. There are already observers watching for each side - maybe an HD camera can see and record PII whereas a human can't?

Because it will cost the taxpayer more?

The price of one webcam? I think somewhere in our multi-trillion-dollar budget there's a place for a webcam. But I am sure if that'd be the problem Amazon would gladly cover the price of the cam.

This is overly dismissive.

A security camera must be agreed on, it's quality chosen, it's recording backed up, maybe someone watches it live and needs to be paid, they need somewhere to sit and monitors.

All of these things are decision points that can be used to delay any vote. No one here is necessarily trustworthy, but the nlrb is a supposedly neutral organization and presumably has it's own security. Why add more? If you assume malicious actors will compromise one security layer why not all of them?

You have to choose some cut off for security over cost and time. I don't think Amazon is arguing in good faith.

> but the nlrb is a supposedly neutral organization

You must be kidding me. NLRB has known pro-union bias, which becomes especially acute under Democratic administration (it was a bit different under Trump but that has passed).

https://www.hrdefenseblog.com/2021/02/non-union-employers-be... https://www.nexsenpruet.com/insights/national-pro-union-poli... https://www.politicususa.com/2021/01/20/joe-biden-just-fired... https://www.labordaysblog.com/2021/03/are-unions-primed-for-...

> You have to choose some cut off for security over cost and time

Nobody asked for 2000 National Guard troops and Fort Knox security on it. What was asked for is one puny webcam. A school kid wouldn't have trouble setting it up. If anything isn't acting in good faith is pretending this is about costs.

It's the federal agency itself that you're accusing of impropriety here.

Of course, it has been never the case that federal agents behaved improperly. In fact, once a person is hired by a federal government, they become incapable of committing a crime or even an impropriety. That's why no courts has ever convicted anyone working for a federal agency in anything inappropriate.

Exactly. It's not like we have recent history of federal employees arresting the founder of the silk road and then concocting a conspiracy to steal hundreds of millions in Bitcoin from him for their own personal gain while hiding it from their agency, and then having employers so incompetent that they didn't realize this until an external watchdog discovered it.....

Having worked in the federal government in the past I can assure you that the best rule of thumb to operate under is you can count on incompetence and you certainly can't count on the opposite.

What are you on about? If the NLRB wanted to take action against this company for union busting, they have statutory tools at their disposal. What you're proposing is completely tinfoiled.

Describing "having a webcam to ensure nobody tampers with the ballots" as "union busting" is extremely disingenuous, bordering on lying. And by "bordering" I mean I'm feeling very charitable today.

Um, I think you put words in my mouth and, in doing so, entirely missed what I was saying.

Because they have a massive amount of data and compute and could and would compile a list of who voted for what, or will attempt to.

The ballot box is stored in a secure building.

Are the Union or Amazon going to break into the offices of a federal agency to deposit fake votes or otherwise tamper with the ballot box?

Doesn’t the security of the building contribute to the security of the ballot?

This assumes honesty of every agency's officer, and lack of negligence along the entire chain leading to the box.

I want to believe, but an extra check won't hurt. Whether the extra check offered by Amazon may be seen as impartial is another question.

A camera controlled by the government department isn't going to protect the ballot box from malfeasance on the part of the government department.

At some point you need to trust someone. I think it's reasonable to trust a government department with no history of questionable conduct.

> That doesn't sound as nefarious as the headline suggests.

Why rule against it if it isn't a big deal? When is "too much security" a bad thing?

I mean, a police officer in every bedroom wouldn't be great. Not saying that applies here, just thought your question was a strange hypothetical.

Who would it have hurt to have approved the request to put a camera on the box of ballots?

Nobody, which is why I said my example didn't apply to the situation, but rather to the broader hypothetical.

I do enjoy the irony of Amazon being paranoid about a little box and what might be happening inside it.

remember that for your stand up session, tech world could use some light humor at the conferences this year

Isn’t this dark humor? :P

some light dark humor

No idea about the camera (there's lively discussion here about that already), but the other measures like sealing the ballot boxes and restricting/auditing access all sound like "make sure the results won't be contentious".

It's totally in Amazon's interest (but also in the interest of anyone who wants a fair vote) to avoid any doubt/claims about tampering.

Well, from a strategic point of view, if you think you're on the losing side, wouldn't it make more sense to create doubts about the procedure? Then you can scream "Rigged election!"...

On the company side? Not necessarily. Having a union "peacefully" is probably better than having a union while screaming about rigged elections, creating strife and chaos within your own company.

Companies' union-busting attempts are often the best advertising a union can wish for.

> if you think you're on the losing side, wouldn't it make more sense to create doubts about the procedure?

If you think you're on the winning side, you'd also want the results to be unimpeachable.

There's no such thing as perfect and unimpeachable and attempts to move the needle eventually have diminishing results and steadily increasing costs on the system. If you let a side push the definition of whats acceptable beyond what is a reasonable standard you make it increasingly likely the procedure will fail in some inconsequential way and give bad faith actors more ammunition to make unreasonable claims about the validity of the results.

If you think you're on the losing side, and have access to the room where the ballots are stored, you would definitely want cameras banned there.

From what very little I know as a non-US person, isn't this being run and stored at a federal agency? IE neither the Union or Amazon "have access" in the conventional sense.

one of those times, you wish every working man knew what efforts are made into bursting unions. And then reflect internally, are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their works unorganized.

once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages, political representation and so on.

> once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages

I've worked the same role in union shops and non-union before. Non-union paid more and had less deadbeat co-workers to navigate around. Depends on your profession and skills, honestly. Probably a benefit for amazon pick and drop workers.

Really sucks at mixed union and non-union tech companies, though. At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that, and getting the union people to do it will take over a week and be done at an inconvenient time interrupting work.

> At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that

This is also likely an insurance limitation as well. Where I work most employees are insured for basic injuries on site. Only those required to move equipment have the add on that they might move equipment weighing 50 lbs or more.

So if I move a desk that weighs 51 pounds and throw out my back, getting work to pay for it might be difficult because I should have gotten facilities to do it as they have the heavy weight add on.

The network cable I want to plug into a open jack doesn't weight 50lbs though. I've worked in places where I need a union electrician to do that task though. Fortunately the union was cool in that location and just ignored my crawling under my desk, I'm told in other offices they were a lot more strict.

I work in a secure facility, when not WFH due to the pandemic. Each jack is numbered, and my computer is tied to that number. If I plug into another jack, I won't connect. I have to get IT to move it for me because it requires them to make some changes to switches. We're not union, but have the same rules.

It feels like you're trying to blame the union for pretty standard practices at established companies.

Does an electrician configure switches at your facility?

I think this was a case where no reconfiguration was involved.

I work in a non-union office and we also have the same policy. I don’t think this reflects it all upon unions.

At non-union shops it's not like you can move your desk wherever you want either, most offices without hot desks have a floor plan and an office manager who all seating changes go through. Don't blame the union for that.

I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about how the Union requires that the equipment transfer is only done by a union employee. And, you'd get fined if you did it yourself. I don't think they're talking about the process being complicated, but rather that the union forcefully inserts itself into the process.

I don't see that as an issue, I see that as a feature. What good is the union if a company can just remove union workers from the process in the name of "efficiency" or whatever metric increases profit at the expense of the employees? The other commenter complained it took a week to get a new desk. To me that's another great thing. That means the staff doing this sort of thing aren't over worked and have some agency to dictate their workload, and me as a worker would respect that system since I too benefit from this ability to collectively negotiate the terms of my job. Personally, I don't care if my company is running the most efficient operation, because usually that means overworking and underpaying your staff to do so.

The culture these policies create isn’t proactive and healthy. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it. It’s dismaying and demoralizing to see someone deliberately punt on their job for hours or days without trying to hide it, just because they can. It makes you want to work somewhere else before you turn into them.

I've seen that behavior all the time in my work experience and I've never been in a union job. There are shitty, frusterating, lazy workers in every job at every level, from entry level to the C level, and plenty of them find a way to not get fired and keep skirting by. I don't think saying workers can be lazy in a union is a very compelling argument, especially considering the collective negotiating ability the union gives you that will just be gone if everyone was left to negotiate with management themselves. I've set to see an argument against a union that couldn't simply be pointed to a non union workplace just as well.

Yes, I don’t think there is any argument you cannot simply assert against to the negative or nullify with the same argument against other kinds of organizations on the Internet.

Oh come on, no need for this cynical sentence that gave me a headache just to parse in the afternoon :)

The two big arguments I see against unions are

1. lazy workers

2. corruption

And in the case of 1., I mean come on. Lazy workers are everywhere union or no. In the case of 2., yes this happens. Wage theft from the worker by management happens probably a lot more, on the other hand. It impacts at least 1/3 of minimum wage earners in cities like LA and Chicago, and for those who have experienced a pay violation on average they loose out on 12.5% of their actual paycheck (1). Just look at the second page of this report and see the horrors for the working poor in our country who are under very little labor protections; all of these issues would have been stymied by a union protecting labor.

At least with a corrupt union you have some recourse where you can drum up internal support among similarly exploited people, and change your organization via vote. As a nonunion worker, in contrast, you can't do anything to enact change if management isn't playing ball with labor, short of quitting your job and losing any and all your benefits like healthcare in the process.

1. https://irle.ucla.edu/old/publications/documents/LAwagetheft...

Sorry, yes, that wasn't the best written sentence. :) I wouldn't actually say the problem is laziness. Developers are famously lazy. It's more of a problem of malignantly wielded protected status. A helpful analogy to the non-unionized world might be a manager's pet employee or a nepotic hire. A bad union environment systemically rewards this in addition to reducing wages through dues and reduced opportunity for good workers.

Wage theft is serious, but has enforcement paths independent of the presence of a union and if reform is needed, it should start there.

I am sympathetic to the plight of the poor but they can be harmed by labor practices supposedly friendly to them.

That kind of thing can happen in any work environment, frankly.

Sometimes people end up in the "yes I can do that" status group.

Could be they have union representation and contract rules that give them considerable agency coupled with low cost and risk.

Could be they are untouchable for some other reason too, principle friend, family, lover, child, sibling... Or, could be they have secured it through various relationships, power, leverage.

Unions do not cause this.

Poorly functioning workplaces can permit it to happen, and any workplace, union or not, can be poorly functioning for a ton of reasons, legal, contractual, managerial, financial...

Where that agency exists, sometimes people exercise it, simple as that.

And this office is not an office with hot desks, and not every office even wants hot desks. The behavior of unions monopolizing a job type in a company is absolutely to blame.

> are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their works unorganized.

It's completely plausible that unions are bad for both employers and employees.

Only a good union example will invalidate your argument, maybe check history and find such a good example then attempt to reformulate some valid hypothesis or try something not that easy to disprove.

While you try to find some bad example of unions and show us how they ruined some companies consider that I will respond with similar examples where the CEO and the board did even worse stuff - so maybe we skip the examples comments and we can conclude that there can be bad unions and bad CEOs (or board/whatever), the main difference is that one group controls a lot of money and can create a lot of PR to present the other group as evil.

> one group controls a lot of money and can create a lot of PR to present the other group as evil.

CEOs also control a lot of money and create a lot of PR, so don't try to paint them as always the good guys.

I'd be surprised if unions controlled as much money as CEOs; union reps aren't generally on rich lists.

Unions don't control as much money by definition. Any Union's coffers are pulled from dues coming out of the pay of the workers. While theoretically, a Union may make more than the employees of a particular Union workplace, it would be only because you took into account cash flow from other Union workplaces.

Statistical multiplexing is the only thing that makes unions viable to my understanding, and I may be wrong on that, as warchests may be partitioned by workplace, I can't confirm whether or not that is the case.

This is also one of the reasons why I'm not sold on the illegalization of secondary strikes. Labor should absolutely exploit network effects to make up for the fact that the capital class will pretty much by default.

If they did, wouldn't the money be in the organization's control and not be the personal wealth of the rep?

> check history

Classic. But historically, advances in wages and advantages tightly follow the economic curve: Employers increase wages when skills and economic development gets better. Not correlated with unionization, even when the union is here when the paper is signed and brandish it as a success (looking at you, Congé Payés in France in 1936, many companies were already doing it when the union gathered with the bosses to say “We do it”).

I think you were manipulated with some examples, so let me know such example that you are thinking of, also try to fit your view with my examples: "miners union demand pay on time and safer conditions", "actors union demand safety", "teacher union demands a raise equal with inflation" . Your view is that this groups should wait until the free market will solve their issue? Many people here are comparing their programming job with someone that works an unskilled low paying job, this people can't individually demand things like "hey, put it in my contract that you will allow me 2 minutes toilet breaks, not 1 like the others, I am a 10X worker see my CV on GitHub"

Wages have stagnated since sometime around unions started to lose power. Wage growth has certainly not kept up with GDP. And the decoupling of these two things happened around the time unions started to lose power.

> But historically, advances in wages and advantages tightly follow the economic curve: Employers increase wages when skills and economic development gets better.

Except that hasn't been the case since the 70's

> While you try to find some bad example of unions and show us how they ruined some companies

I think your perspective does not match the reality of the last 50 years or so. We are not in the 1800's or early 1900's, when unions were super important in shaping our labor laws and actually helping workers. Nobody can deny that.

Since then?

To reuse a phrase: The huge sucking sound you've been hearing are jobs --union and otherwise-- going to China by the millions. Unions, and their aggressive anti-business stance in the US, have been a part of this exodus. I know people who forcefully retired from a number of union jobs as their unions decimated their respective industries and their jobs went to China.

Sure, of course, reality isn't a single variable problem and we can't just blame unions for the erosion of our industrial base. There are many factors that led to this, including our incompetent politicians and their never ending quest for party power rather than what's good for the nation.

Unions in the US have become distinctly different from their European counterparts. Our unions use the threat of destroying a business as a way to get what they want. European unions have somehow reached a balance where they understand protecting the business is just as important as protecting workers. It's a far more symbiotic relationship rather than a brutally adversarial one.

No love lost of Amazon here. I just think it is important to understand history so we don't repeat our painfully-learned mistakes. The US and Europe are out of time. We can't make more mistakes. We have been helping China achieve the rank of second economy in the world for fifty years. How much more self-harm is enough?

I desperately want to go back to having manufacturing in the US as an option. Today, that option does not exist but within very specific boundaries. Anything "union" is dead, whether they know it or not. Save this message and read it again in 10, 15 or 20 years.

This is exceptionally hilarious considering the Washington Post's (Bezos' paper) perspective on voter fraud this last presidential election.

But at least this time it fits with their fairly new "Democracy Dies in Darkness" tagline.

There are a number of ways you can read that tagline.

> perspective on voter fraud

What's their perspective exactly?

That even questioning whether it may be happening is itself a fascist assault on democracy.

Maybe WP will run an article stating that workers from Walmart should be allowed to vote in their election...

Upon meta-consideration, I believe (but cannot prove, even subjectively) that it speaks volumes of the cumulative consultancy expertise Amazon has evidently hired to bear down upon this issue just how reasonable Amazon’s requests felt.

Sure, the headline optics of the webcam are bad, but the other requests... what’s not to dislike about them? More careful security and anti-tampering measures, what’s not to like about that? Sure, it’s a bit onerous, but also, who wouldn’t be willing to pay that one-off onus in order to head off the prospects of a contentious result further down the line?

And that’s the thing: I can’t quite answer my own implicit question. I’m pretty sure Amazon is really really upset about this, and they’re preparing to contest the legitimacy of the result, somehow? Is that what I’m getting the feeling of? I’m really not sure, but the whole request’s troughs and valleys strikes me as decidedly odd, and I feel strangely impinged-upon by it. Manipulated, even.

EDIT:

Several commenters have remarked below that it is actually a federal agency which conducts the election process. This is implied (or explicitly stated) to be FUD: Amazon preparing to discredit the election’s integrity by remarking that the unions hadn’t accepted their requests when it wasn’t the unions who could grant satisfaction of those requests (but rather, the appropriate governmental federal agency).

There must be a secure audit trail from the voter to the final tally. That's how public trust in the result is garnered.

There have been cases in the past where someone did a vote for me or [some violent act that they were capable of following up on]. The audit trail needs to break someplace between the individual voter and the actual vote they cast. We still need a good trail to believe that all votes were counted correctly, only people who should vote voted, and nobody voted more than they were allowed. This is a hard problem.

Doesn't anyone have an idea of the likelihood of this passing?

Voter fraud is rare. I think I read that in the Washington Post.

The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation actually has an extensive database of voter fraud, and while they try to make a big deal about the number of cases that have been found, the unwritten fact is that the rate is infinitesimally low.

>During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter’s name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an employee’s job title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set aside.

What kind of job title would disqualify an employee from being allowed to vote to unionize?

The union isn't a blanket union for all Amazon employees. It only covers about 5,800 employees who want to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).

An AWS engineer casting a vote for the warehouse workers to unionize would be invalid, for example.

Engineers in the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union seems absurd, but strange things like that can happen.

For example, a lot of engineers in aerospace and defense (including software engineers) were members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American (UBC).

That came about because when Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose he hired a bunch of UBC labor. They only built one Spruce Goose, but as the company did other things, many of those workers stayed, and UBC continued to represent them. When Hughes started Hughes Aircraft, more workers turned to UBC to represent them.

As late as 2000, Local 1553 of UBC was still representing all kinds of engineers at various companies that have arisen out of the various splits and mergers that the Hughes companies have been involved in. I don't know if that is still the case.

There's something funny about satellites and missiles, which are about as far from wood-based projects as you can get, being built by people represented by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. But then there is "Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk" [1], so maybe it isn't so funny after all.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366

> What kind of job title would disqualify an employee from being allowed to vote to unionize?

Managers and supervisors, generally, including when supervision (including just giving out work assignments with some degree of discretion) is a relatively small part of the worker's job.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...

Presumably being in management.

You are not allowed to be in an NLRB-recognized union if you are any kind of manager or supervisor (I believe the exact legal definition is having hiring and hiring power).

Honestly I don't understand why we can't have cameras installed at ALL voting-related facilities.

An important aspect of voting systems is that, while you want to authenticate that each voter is allowed to vote, you also want strong protections against discovering who voted for who. I understand why it seems like cameras would be a good idea, but it's very easy to imagine how such a system could be abused.

Can you tell a camera's field of view by looking at it? Could your grandparents? Trusting systems that secure the vote is much easier when they are designed resist being changed to abet oppression.

That's why you have voting booths. Voter goes in booth with ballot, closes curtain, comes out with ballot, ballot goes in counting machine. That way, you can:

1. verify who is voting

2. verify trail from voter to count

3. no extra votes

4. no discarded votes

Scrap the voting machines. Manual counting (with randomly picked volunteers) is the only solution that guarantees trust in the process.

As the recent US elections showed, voting machines are open to the opposition saying "we only lost because the machines were hacked against us".

Counting machines are fine as long as you can do a hand recount. The machines people are upset about in 2020 are actually pretty reasonable; unlike the machines people were upset about in 2000 which didn't create a paper trail.

> Manual counting (with randomly picked volunteers) is the only solution that guarantees trust in the process.

This is naive. The Georgia Presidential election was hand-recounted, twice. The loser still claims it was stolen, incited an insurrection that sacked the Capitol while Congress was certifying the winner.

When one party is solely dedicated to power, not democracy, none of your ideals or safeguards mean anything. They just don't care what anyone thinks as long as they can hold power.

Why not just have two vote count machines made by different manufacturers and just ensure that they produce the same counts?

Money

Sure, it's a good system.

But, of course, if you had a camera, voters might reasonably be worried that you would combine the footage with vote order and figure our who voted when.

Sure, the counter would have to be set up so the order of the votes cast is not retrievable. Any display should be only the total of votes counted, not the tally for each item on the ballot.

This doesn't seem hard at all to do right.

I agree that you could easily design a system where you could have video of everyone dropping their ballots into a ballot box and it would still be impossible to associate a particular vote with a voter.

However, that's not the standard. The standard is avoiding the appearance of being able to track votes. I don't trust the people who make voting machine software or the government. You don't know that your voting tabulation software correctly anonymizes the results and you shouldn't need that technical knowledge to feel safe. The correct approach is to make a system that guarantees what we want and would be impossible for a bad actor to abuse.

The gold standard would be an auditable ballot trail from voter to final tally.

Any gaps in that leads to suspicion of error and fraud. That leads to bad things, as recent events amply illustrated.

Yes, it can be done while still having a secret ballot.

>The correct approach is to make a system that guarantees what we want and would be impossible for a bad actor to abuse.

No such system is possible

We can do a heluva lot better.

Hmm ... could we do voting with NFTs and get rid of this mess, and all the paper waste? 1 NFT = 1 vote and you get the NFT by presenting ID in person at the police station.

> you also want strong protections against discovering who voted for who.

You also want protection against discovering who voted at all!

Not at all, the fact that someone voted (or didn't) MUST be recorded, otherwise you can't check whether there has been multiple voting.

Yes, but you don't need to keep that record. Unless, of course, voting is mandatory.

In this case Amazon would be seeing who was voting.

That's not what the article says.

It says that the cameras would "keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting" which seems... perfectly reasonable to me.

It wouldn't take much for that reality to be distorted and end up leaving some people with the impression that Amazon has security cameras watching who votes. That's going to suppress the vote and potentially alter the outcome.

Just look at this thread and how much confusion over what the cameras are recording.

Surely they wouldn't watch the feed during counting hours! Who would go against their word so brazenly?

Votes are anonymous, people can watch the count all they want.

> During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter’s name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an employee’s job title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set aside.

It looks like they aren't anonymous?!

I participated in an NLRB election about 10 years ago, and I believe the name was on the ballot envelope, so the count happened in two stages.

First, go through all of the envelopes, reading the names, and either side can contest ballots, which are set aside.

Then, the uncontested ballots are removed from the envelopes and counted.

If the vote margin is less than the number of contested ballots, that kicks off some kind of remediation process.

Oh good, that sounds nice. And how did the vote go?

The union lost by 2 votes. The election results were later thrown out because the company had engaged in illegal electioneering, but by the time this happened the company had fired several union organizers (also illegally) and the campaign lost steam.

aye....classic.

indeed.

Intimidation is the name of the game when it comes to union-busting, I think it is pretty obvious that this is one more attempt at that.

Both ways. Unions have their share of intimidating people to vote for them.

Whataboutism doesn't really apply when it's a $1.5 trillion company vs a couple dozen over-extended union organizers.

It does when they have the ability to undetected break into the room where the ballots are and replace ballots. The crime is easy enough to plan. I'm not sure if security is good enough to stop it or not.

seems pretty trivial to just block the camera physically to prevent that

It's not secret apparently:

> During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter’s name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an employee’s job title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set aside.

Doesn't sound like they know the actual vote though? At least how you've quoted the description. Just the name and title of the employee.

Fair, I hadn't considered that. It does seem like the actual vote should be private.

Seems more like a roll call check. Usually, signatures are on the outside of sealed ballots.

According to the article:

>...Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB’s Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according to an NLRB order denying Amazon’s request. The camera feed would have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU.

Because in order to be democratic, an election has to be fair, free and secret. That's why I am always a little bit disturbed with signed ballots for example. I never signed a paper ballot in my whole life. Or any other ballot as far as that is concerned.

Cameras would limit the secret part.

I hope that they manage to secure the union. I don't think that unions have a place a lot of times, that said, the imbalance of employers like Amazon seem out of step with what should be negotiation, and setting what at least appear to be unreasonable terms.

Not to say that unions and employees can't overreach and overreact, in this case I hope they get things through. I also hope that Amazon doesn't close their local facilities as a result.

Why is everyone against fair elections?

I don't think everyone is, Georgia recently made an effort toward free and fair elections.

After spending some years in development of cryptographic software, I became an ardent fan of not-so-easily forged pieces of paper. (Try counterfeiting modern banknotes. NOT easy.)

Cryptographic software is tricky, very easy to implement incorrectly or with major security gaps, completely opaque to the amateur user, vulnerable to all kinds of zero-days and possibly even progress in mathematics (God save us from the day when someone comes with a fast factorization algorithm). If secure enough, it will be burdensome enough that people will try to circumvent it. It runs on a stack of OSes and hardware that may (read: of course they do) have fatal security flaws rendering your secure app insecure.

No, thanks. Give me a paper ballot any day.

You’re saying that it is possible for a cryptographic system to be insecure. I’m saying that it’s impossible for human counting to be secure.

Protocol: Alice and Bob send their votes to Eve. Eve wins. The end.

Votes are anything but easily forged, they are in fact quite trivial to secure.

What IS easily forged and extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure is a result printed out by some opaque computer that is running a huge amount of software on an extremely complex processor which runs its own closed-source firmware, probably communicating over the internet 'securely' to some other computers.

Oh yeah because we don’t use software at all in the current system.

Cryptography won't help if you want a secret ballot.

Not true, there's a lot of research into voting systems that provide both secrecy and various verifiabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...

A voting system where voters can prove which way they voted is vulnerable to coercion or retribution.

The manager rounds up the workers and "suggests" they all compare how they voted. Those who voted "pro-company" will likely reveal their vote. So for everyone who refuses to reveal their vote, the manager checks a box next to their name on the attendance sheet.

There may be a voting system that provides all the desired guarantees, but I doubt such a system is also easily understood and trusted by the average voter.

You can partially defeat this by allowing people to change votes. Then everyone has something that "proves" they at some point voted pro-company but they could have changed it later.

Ok what about when you're coerced to change your vote?

You change your vote, collect your reward, and change your vote back again?

Just make that kind of thing illegal like so many other things around union elections and come down on them like a ton of bricks if they violate this. Both the employers and unions.

We have secret ballots because this is not a solvable problem. If you're threatened with your job it is one thing, if you are threatened with violence for voting "incorrectly" it is another.

Current protocol: Alice sends her personal information and vote in the mail to Eve. TV tells Alice that the system is secure.

Couldn't you use something like monero but, I guess then you couldn't audit it.

There are people who are experts in cryptography, and there are people who are experts in rigging elections. The author of this comic is neither.